Our non-Red Sox MLB award picks for 2025

Your Favorite Player of 2025

A lot of people wrote off Mookie Betts in the first half of 2025, reasoning that this was the year that he finally ceased to be one of the best baseball players in the world. And if you just looked at his offensive line — .262/.330/.411 with 20 home runs — you might think that’s the right conclusion. But here we are at the end of the season and Betts managed to put up 5.0 bWAR (more than any other position player on the Red Sox), the 25rd-best mark in all of baseball amongst position players.

How did he do it? At 32-years-old he turned himself into one of the best defensive shortstops in the world, finishing in the 89th percentile in Outs Above Average. There is nothing this man can’t do and I miss him every day

In 2024 all eyes were on Yamamoto starting from Opening Day. And there were some rough patches. All the haters came out of the woodwork saying the same things: overrated, can’t pitch in America, etc. Well, 200 strikeouts in 173 innings? Fewest hits per nine innings? Seems like the stuff is ok after all. It’s gonna be a long decade for folks in the NL West.

He’s the first Cub in the 30-30-30 club. He’s the second Cub with the home run and stolen bases aspect of that. Following a convincing but not earth-shattering start to his Major League career last year, it was extremely unlikely that PCA could be a game-wrecker the way he is. And yet, he embodies the spirit a team that shares a kinship with the Red Sox. His career’s just beginning.

Cal has electrified a city and become a national star this season. Now Seattle has to share him with the world. Just before the All Star break, I hobbled out of my sickbed, strapped on a back brace, and made my way out into the world. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t going to a medical appointment; I was going somewhere much more important: to the ballpark. Because I couldn’t sit, I stood all the way down on the train. Some drunk guy put his arms around me and tried to pick me up; whether he was attempting to help me limp across the street or flirt with me remains unclear. I successfully stood throughout the game and managed not to fall in the crowd. I didn’t tell my doctor or physical therapist I was planning to do any of this. This is what we do for our favorite players. I was rewarded with the “Be a Peach / Vote Cal” T-shirt that came with my ticket, as well as the real payoff: seeing him hit Homer #33 in the 7th inning. It was all worth it; I wouldn’t change a thing.

Cal is a workhorse, a dangerous switch hitter, and the home run derby champ. He runs that team day in and day out. He’s mashed 60 home runs and counting, is unquestionably the leader of the Mariners, and is also a certifiably nice guy. There’s a chance to Vote Cal one more time and I hope it happens.

There is genuinely no quantitative reason, I just like the guy! And he made Rockies games kind of fun to watch approximately once every ten days.

Your Least Favorite Player of 2025

And for the ninth year running, Aaron Judge!

But I had to think about it. Honorable Mentions to go Anthony Volpe and Cody Bellinger.

Our silent feud continued all the way across the country.

We know your parents were teachers, please tell every national announcing team to shut up about it now.

Your Favorite Storyline of 2025

Remember those? That was fun a week.

As close as the Red Sox have been to the receiving end of this story I’m glad it never happened. But it is weird, right? We’ve almost become accustomed to people joining a once exclusive club that now features guys like Phil Humber. (I know that was a perfect game in addition). Let’s keep these special.

The Athletics playing well despite not having a home

Everyone wrote off the fact that the A’s were playing in a Minor League stadium because the team played historically badly just two years ago and were in no position to make a run anytime soon. Well, they’re less than 10 games lower than .500, they have the runaway AL Rookie of the Year favorite, and the probable second place finisher. They have some promising young hitters emerging, as well. This is a team that can make a run in maybe 2027- hopefully Vegas is ready to show out for their team.

His epic season kept unfolding, one smashed record at a time. A very exciting story, and an all-timer.

The Rockies sweeping the Marlins on the road

As a secondary Rockies fan, outside of Boston’s 10-game win streak, that may have been the most fun that I had watching baseball all year long.

Your Least Favorite Storyline of 2025

The disappointing New York Mets

I adore New York City, a place I called home for eight years. I also despise the New York Yankees. I reconcile these two facts every season by hoping against hope that the Mets will finally take over the city, at least temporarily, like they did in the mid-80s. With Steve Cohen enthusiastically pouring his billions into the Mets on one side of the East River while disinterested Yankee ownership is content to count money on the other, I figured 2025 would be the year. It wasn’t.

Guys that have been in the Majors for a cup of coffee getting into the All-Star Game

I love Jacob Misiorowski. I believe he will be a very good pitcher for the Brewers, and inevitably a great pitcher somewhere else when that team control runs out. I think big hosses with an electric fastball is an archetype of the future, or at least, as someone who’s also a certified big Payton Tolle fan, that’s what I’m telling myself. That does not mean Jake M — if I can call him that — should have gotten All-Star recognition five starts into his Major League career. That he finished the season with an ERA north of 4 (4.09) further solidified the “small sample size” fallacy. There’s always the All-Star game next year.

The downfall of the Twins

I’m not quite sure why I like the Twins — possibly because I am a twin and once when I was watching a Red Sox/Twins game as a child, I told my dad I was rooting for the Twins and he said, “No, you’re not,” — but I do, and I was sad to see them (and their fans) ruthlessly torn apart both at the trade deadline as well as before and after it. To all my Twins friends out there, things will get better (I hope).

I don’t care about Aaron Judge’s bWAR. If a catcher hits 60 home runs while leading his star-crossed team to the postseason, he’s my MVP.

This shouldn’t have to be framed with “as a catcher” but when you take that into account too? His Value Over Replacement Catcher is essentially infinite. He plays every game and he’s a star.

Take Aaron Judge off the Yankees and replace him with an average outfielder and it’s still a decent team. Take Cal Raleigh off the Mariners and replace him with a replacement level catcher and they might not be a playoff team. I hope he hits two home runs Sunday. Aaron Judge, as much as he’s not liked around these parts, is a Hall of Famer. You don’t need to pad his credentials by unjustly voting for him in a year that he’s been beaten soundly, by a catcher, as the most valuable player.

You knew I was going to say this! People will think I’m biased because I live in Seattle and hate the Yankees but we’re way beyond that.

Cal Raleigh’s presence on the Mariners, day in and day out, has been transformational. You can’t talk about that team without talking about Cal. They don’t make the playoffs without Cal. I believe their front office (which has often operated in a similar way to our own: think nibbling around the edges, trying to be just good enough to maybe squeak by, and of course saving money) made the trades and improvements they did because of Cal. They built around him; without Cal as a bedrock, they would never have gone out and gotten Josh Naylor or Eugenio Suárez at the deadline this year to try to get over the hump.

For anyone hung up on the statistical differences between Judge and Cal, or saying that Judge would have had more home runs if only he weren’t injured (but he was. Boo hoo) I found this MLB article to be particularly instructive.

As much as I would love to say Cal Raleigh and encourage the continued historic discourse, the American League MVP is, unfortunately, Aaron Judge. While you could argue that Raleigh may have been more valuable to his team, which is an argument I’m willing to hear, you could make the same point with Judge. Anthony Volpe fell off a cliff offensively and defensively, and while Judge couldn’t make up for that on defense for a while, he sure as hell did offensively. Let’s face it, possibly winning a division with Cody Bellinger or 38-year-old Paul Goldschmidt as your second-best hitter is something that likely wouldn’t have been achievable without Judge.

While some of that success is definitely owed to New York’s pitching, it’s not like they’re a top-five pitching team in the league, and they sat around league average for the majority of the season. While Cal Raleigh’s story is incredible, and the Mariners likely wouldn’t be where they are without him, he’s also got second-half Julio Rodriguez and Eugenio Suarez as partners in crime on this journey, which is a luxury that can’t be said for Judge when he played half a season without Giancarlo Stanton.

But, with all that said, I believe that voter fatigue and the fact that the MVP voters are writers who want a good story to tell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cal came out on top.

I would like him to win every award there is, frankly, including like a People’s Choice Award.

The guy is amazing and he stands alone. Mookie, you can win one of these in 2026!

I know, I know. I want to start this by saying I used a lot of the same rationale here as my AL pick. Perhaps it’s my soft spot for ol’ Kyle from Waltham (or, uh, Middletown Ohio), perhaps it’s that Shohei doesn’t have the longevity on the mound as was once thought and looks beatable even if an extremely formidable pitcher, but Schwarber has been instrumental in Philadelphia’s success. If Schwarber is expected to get a couple of first place votes, I’ll be the contrarian on this staff.

I’m seeing him in person for the first time tomorrow (I hope!) and I can’t wait.

Another year, another MVP for Shohei. While Judge and Shohei repeating this year would be very boring, you can’t fault greatness.

I know we’re doing NON RED-SOX AWARDS and I’m also aware I’m being contrarian again. I don’t care. Crochet has looked unbeatable outside of a couple starts. Skubal didn’t end the year very gracefully, and that’s understating it just a bit. When Crochet pitches, the team is 15-5 against teams with a winning record. When Skubal pitches, they’re 12-7. You also need to consider that WITH that 15-5 record, early in the season, Crochet lacked the run support to bolster it even more in his favor. I won’t be contrarian enough to put anyone other than Skubal at a firm number two, though.

Similar to Aaron Judge, I don’t want to do this, but the analyst within me can’t help but judge this based on the stats. Garret Crochet’s 6.2 bWAR is certainly nothing to scoff at, and if Skubal didn’t exist, he’d certainly be a favorite. But Skubal collecting 6.5 bWAR in 14 fewer innings really puts this argument to rest.

As exciting as Crochet’s addition to the Red Sox was (for all of us and the league as a whole), Skubal’s presence at the top of the rotation led the Tigers’ rookie-filled group of starters all season, even despite Detroit’s brutal fall off.

He has a 1.97 ERA this season. Performances like that don’t just grow on trees, and Skenes now has two in consecutive years.

While it might not feel particularly close, Paul Skenes and Christopher Sanchez are very close in terms of value this year, with Sanchez pitching more innings in a less favorable home park. But Paul Skenes is Paul Skenes, and the Pirates are the Pirates, and he might just win this unanimously.

It’s Skenes, and I’d also like to thank the calendar for giving us Skenes-Tolle this year. That was probably my single favorite game.

American League Rookie of the Year

After having one of the single best games any hitter has ever had in the history of baseball, he had a fantastic season and is the figurehead alongside Jacob Wilson and Ty Soderstrom of bringing the Athletics back to relevancy. I think he may just do it.

Nick Kurtz has been fantastic and deserves to win this award unanimously, honestly. If Roman Anthony were called up sooner it’d be more of a race, but that didn’t happen. Thankfully, now Red Sox fans don’t have to worry about Anthony earning an extra year of service time if he wins the award, unlike Kurtz and the A’s.

National League Rookie of the Year

He’s looked great and has given the Cubs bullpen some much-needed breathing room where there wasn’t much consideration for a rookie arm to come in and do so. That he’s just 24 putting up numbers of a bonafide veteran (2.67 ERA, 1.08 WHIP) strengthens his case over Drake Baldwin, who’s also having a great season.

I don’t think this one will be particularly close. Horton provided the Cubs with so much value both with his starting pitching performances and the fact that these performances limited the need to use a bullpen that was somewhat rocky, to say the least. It really sucks that he got injured this week, and I just hope he’s able to continue this amazing campaign in the postseason.

I’m giving this award to the people of one of our nation’s finest cities — Madison, Wisconsin — as much as I am to Baldwin himself.

You will remember the 2025 MLB season for…

The year the umps were so bad that ABS is being implemented next year

Baseball is a game of inches that adds up. In 2025, thousands upon thousands of calls were missed. Check out, for example, this Orion Kerkering – Matt Chapman matchup from July where three CONSECUTIVE PITCHES were missed (one being marginal), allowing Chapman to drive a ball into the outfield, changing the landscape of the entire game. UmpireAuditor, whose Twitter page I frequent, proclaimed that over 1000 calls were missed the week of April 20. In a league where a team earning a playoff bye is less than 10 games better than a team that will miss the playoffs, that has huge implications going forward. Modern fans have long clamored for robots to take over the operations. While I’m somewhat more of a purist than those calls for umpires’ jobs, it’s past the point that can be excused and now some accountability must take place. That the average Minor League challenge takes about 15 seconds further satisfies the mind, as, unlike the NFL, it won’t push games past the 3-hour mark.

Cal Raleigh and his relentless pursuit of every accolade and record under the sun

Mariners games have become must-see TV in Seattle every single night. My girlfriend has asked me—three times now!—to turn on the game so we could watch. I’m sure she never in her entire life envisioned such a request coming out of her mouth. Cal Raleigh is all people are talking about.

The year the Red Sox brought me joy again

I’ll be honest, I’m usually happy when watching any form of baseball. But over the last three seasons, Boston’s .500 or under .500 ball wasn’t exactly a joy to watch. It would obviously be frustrating if they hadn’t made the postseason, but even if that happened I would’ve genuinely enjoyed the Red Sox’s 2025 campaign. It’s not just that they started winning again (which is obviously nice), but this turned into a genuinely fun team to watch. Wilyer Abreu’s start to the year was the sparkplug for the season, and calling up Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, Payton Tolle and Connelly Early just kept adding to that excitement.

Even when they weren’t at their best, I’d much rather watch young rookies find their way in the league with a team of support around them than washed-out veterans hanging on by a thread through 162 games. And, they mostly weren’t bad! Which makes the season more exciting in general.

Garrett Crochet is our new Chris Sale (who I’m genuinely to young to remember when he first came to the Sox, so it was exciting for me to finally experience something like that this year), Brayan Bello scared me frequently but genuinely blossomed into both a better and more well-rounded version of himself, and Garrett Whitlock put on the best season of his career after finally not being forced into a starter shaped hole as a guy with long relief stuff.

While we can’t guarantee that this will all hold up for much longer this year (and that’s the fun of baseball!), just watching what we’ve watched up until this point is something I’ll look back on with gratitude for years to come.

I can sometimes be one of the most negative people out there when it comes to the Red Sox — a trait I don’t love about myself — but looking back on this season has shown me all the great baseball, fun times and bonding moments. And a lot of that is due to the people I’ve met along the way, so thank you all for being a part of this crazy Red Sox journey with all of us at OTM.